If Fate Weren't So Cruel: Draconis Argentum
by Ominous-Onymous
Summary: What would have happened if Diva took to long to give Riku her blood? What if Saya had arrived in time? A world in which Riku lives, and fulfills his destiny, as Saya's Chevalier. AU from episode 32.


If Fate Weren't So Cruel: Draconis Argentum

"Don't be scared." Diva had cornered Riku in the hold of the doomed Red Shield ship. Her little boy's idiot brother had been taken care of and her dear, older sister was being taken care of by her Carl. She would never have let him go, of course, if he had even a chance of defeating Saya. That right was reserved for her.

She watched Riku's Adam's apple bob avidly as he swallowed in fear. He was so cute. More importantly, he was the perfect father for her children. She hoped they would look a little bit like him, although, taking into account the line of practically identical chiropteran queens she and Saya-neesama had come from that was hardly likely.

Her hand came up to the clasp of her dress, behind the blue rose that was her trademark. She let it drop to the floor. His eyes widened. Honestly, as a Chevalier of her sister, even a new one, he should be putting up bit more of a fight, surely. Not that she minded. The frightened rabbit look was good on him. Diva could already tell that his face was one that she would be able to put to good use. He was special, she knew, or she wouldn't have been so drawn to him.

She reached, lightning fast, and grabbed the front of his coat. She was sure she'd seen it somewhere before. The moment of confusion as she dredged up memories of a time she had tried so hard to forget halted her work on his clothes for a few moments. Ah! Saya-neesama's other Chevalier! She remembered he had been wearing something quite similar on the day her big sister had freed her from her prison.

The mystery solved, she tossed the coat negligently away to the side and started to pick at the buttons. She would have just torn the whole thing off but he was becoming more frightened by the minute and she was enjoying herself too much to rush.

This would prove to be her biggest mistake.

SayaSayaSayaSayaSayaSayaSayaSayaSayaSayaSayaSayaSaya

Saya looked around frantically. The news that the ship was going to self-destruct had made her panic, and she'd somehow thrown Carl through a couple of walls. Now she just had to find her brothers and then they could leave this place. The problem with this was, of course, that the ship was big and she had no idea where Kai and Riku were.

She thought for a few moments. Well, if she could throw people through steel walls now, why not try another of her chiropteran powers? She closed her eyes, and listened.

_She was listening for Riku. Kai would likely be with him and she _knew_ she could identify the sound of her Chevalier. Spreading her listening further she heard a group of people at the far end of the ship, on the deck. Probably Joel, David and the others. If they wouldn't wait for their last hope, who would they wait for? She couldn't hear Riku over there. She listened in the other direction._

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Noth- there! She could hear Riku's heart, someone who had to be Kai and… Oh god, Diva!

Saya sped down the corridor in a way she hadn't done in over thirty years. Her only concern was getting to Diva before she did something to Kai or Riku. Although, her sister's interest was probably more in Riku than in Kai. And she should have _known_ that. If anyone could give insights into Diva's psychology it should be _her_.

Why else would she be here but for the boy she believed she'd killed, only to have him to return as her sister's Chevalier? She had a connection to him. And she, Saya, might have seen that connection too late. She sped up.

DivaDivaDivaDivaDivaDivaDivaDivaDivaDivaDivaDivaDivaDiva 

Diva stood up with a satisfied sigh and pulled her dress back on. The act had been more enjoyable than she'd anticipated and, in addition to the knowledge that she was soon going to be carrying two beautiful children inside of her, it had proved to put her in a _very_ good mood.

In fact, although she would never normally consider it, she was in such a good mood that she had decided to give the father of her children her blood, for playing such an important roll.

She looked around to where he had pulled himself up into a sitting position, his knees drawn up to his chest, his eyes dull. She didn't like it. He was supposed to be quivering in fear at the site of here, those delightful brown eyes full of terrified tears. By being so despondent he was ruining her good mood. Hmmm. Maybe she wouldn't give him here blood after all. But no, that would make her feel better. Wouldn't it? Well, she'd see afterward.

She grabbed him by one arm and pulled him up, jerking him towards her. She looked into his eyes and saw a glimmer of that same fear. It pleased her greatly. The struggling that ensued, not so much. Despite the fact that he wouldn't or couldn't fight, he was a Chevalier, and as such, he was a bit more of a handful than some human.

She bit her lip and felt her mouth fill with blood. This would be _so_ romantic. She would kiss him and as his mouth filled with her blood he would become beautiful red crystal. His body a statue that would immortalize the fear of Diva that was so evident on his face.

His struggling was becoming increasingly hard to deal with. Was it just her, or was he becoming stronger? Not that it mattered. No Chevalier could match a queen, not matter how strong. Still, she should kiss him and have done with it. Then she would find Carl and they could go home. No, first they'd go to Paris to buy a new dress to celebrate, and then they would go home.

Just as she reached forward to kiss him one final time the wall behind Riku exploded. She threw Riku behind her, knowing he would be fine. There was a thump as he collided with the human.

If Carl were disturbing her time with Riku she would be… angry.

The smoke cleared enough to reveal that it was most certainly _not_ Carl. Her sister stood in front of her, crimson eyes blazing, waist-length hair flying and her sword held out in front of her, dripping with blood. She looked, thought Diva dimly as she backed away from her furious older sister, like that day in Vietnam. Wild.

Her sister's gaze went past her first to the human, then to her Riku.

"Riku!"

Damn, at least that human hadn't woken up yet. She thought throwing Riku into him was probably what was responsible. Everything seemed to be falling apart. And where was-

"Diva!" that was Carl, being blown through another wall by a particularly hard hit from a certain cello case.

"Saya!" and there was Saya-neesama's other Chevalier, too! Everything was going _wrong_! She wanted to go home that _second_!

"Carl! We're leaving!" so saying, Diva jumped onto Carl back, simultaneously deflecting the cello case from what would have been another damaging attack.

She felt Carl's body grow larger and morph into his true, chiropteran form, the one with wings. The couple leapt through the multiple floors separating the hold from the deck. Looking back she saw that Saya had the human slung over one shoulder and her other Chevalier was helping Riku up. No doubt they'd be following in a few short moments.

They burst into open air. Diva reminded herself to congratulate Carl on his dramatic entrance later if she got the time. By the sound the humans below were making, it had been very shocking indeed.

Carl shot a few spikes out of his arm, one of them getting a human in the lower back. Diva grinned. If it didn't kill him, he would never walk again. She hoped it was the latter. She always laughed when she saw humans in those silly chair things.

Saya-neesama was approaching from below, her heartbeat fast. She was more afraid than angry now. Of her? No, probably not. She was more likely afraid of the ship blowing up and killing her pet human. She would survive of course, as would Diva, if they stayed on the ship. Chiropteran queens and their Chevaliers were far more resilient than humans. A little explosion, the best this ship could produce, wouldn't be nearly enough to put _her_ out of commission. If worst came to worst they could always fly away or swim. Diva enjoyed swimming. In blood preferably.

And now Saya-neesama was on deck. She'd taken the stairs it seemed, which was strange. All Chevaliers had the power of flight. But of course, Riku couldn't fly yet and the human would need someone to carry him in addition to Saya. Really, that human was becoming annoying with the way he limited Saya, making her act more human. Perhaps she would kill him. Or give him her blood. He was pretty cute too.

The other Chevalier had taken the human and Riku over to the helicopter and returned to Saya-neesama's side. Helicopter. Was that what it was called? What a funny word. Anyway, she wouldn't let Riku escape without giving him her blood.

And that was when a brilliant idea occurred to her. Wouldn't it be wonderful if she could have her Riku-statue and look at it all the time too? She could already see how the scene would play itself out. Carl would pick the boy up in his claws and they could take him back home with them. That would be _perfect_; She'd be able to look at him whenever she wanted and her daughters would be able to look at their father. She tapped Carl on the shoulder and pointed towards Riku. He was a good Chevalier. He would know what the gesture meant.

And he did.

Unfortunately, Saya-neesama saw what he was doing and made a dash towards Riku. Huh. So, she was starting to accept the chiropteran inside of her, was she? Well, she still had a lot to learn in that respect. After all, Diva's speed was so great she couldn't be seen, let alone caught. Also unfortunately, Saya-neesama's other Chevalier was closer and he was only going marginally slower that Saya.

Well, she was closest. She would reach Riku first and then he would take her blood.

RikuRikuRikuRikuRikuRikuRikuRikuRikuRikuRikuRikuRikuRiku 

To Riku, things were still a bit of a blur. He remembered that horribly beautiful girl smiling at him and he remembered some of… what she'd done next, but… mostly it was as if he had fallen into a half-doze. Everything was hazy. He knew what was going on but at the same time it was removed from him. As if he were standing next to himself, uncaring, impotent.

When he had returned to a more normal state he had immediately been confronted with Diva's pouting face and started to struggle. Strangely this had seemed to please her. She bit her lip, a line of blood tracing its way down her sixteen year-old face. With awful clarity he realized why. If his blood were now like Saya-neechan's, then that meant he was susceptible to Diva's…

But why? After she had come down here, hurt Kai-niichan and did those awful things to him, she was going to up and turn his body into a crystal statue? Just like that? Why?

And then, thank god, the wall had exploded. Normally, this would not be cause for any celebration but since it involved being thrown away from Diva, he didn't really mind. Or he didn't until he hit the slowly returning to consciousness Kai, subsequently knocking him out again.

He was trying to get up again a few seconds later.

The cause of the explosion was revealed to be his big sister whose eyes immediately went to him and his brother. She shouted something that he didn't hear before her eyes went back to Diva, burning even more brightly than before.

There was another explosion. Riku thought this was becoming slightly ridiculous. It was Haji this time, engaging a man with Asian features and a strange arm.

Riku heard Diva yell something at the Asian man. Riku thought he was probably her Chevalier. He was vindicated when Diva leapt onto his back as he sprouted wings and flew straight through the ceiling.

Saya ran over to him and Kai.

"Riku, are you okay? What happened to Kai?" and then, as if as an afterthought, "… and why are you naked?" Which should really have told Riku that something was wrong because Saya was the only person he knew who got really embarrassed when her siblings took their shirts off.

"I'm fine, but Kai's been knocked out twice now." said Riku, struggling with his trousers. Saya sweatdropped at her youngest brothers pronouncement. Well, who wouldn't?

Saya's gaze moved to her oldest brother, assessing him for injuries.

"He doesn't look to bad. Riku, can you help Haji lift him? We need to go after Diva as soon as possible." And here she stopped for a moment, and Riku heard a song that arrested his efforts at clothing himself. It was at once familiar and strange to him, like Diva's except… red. He saw the other Chevalier's eyebrows go up.

"From what I can tell, David, Joel and the others are still at the other end of the ship. She might go over there if she sees them." At her words, Haji moved over and lifted Kai easily with one hand, throwing one of the limp arms around his pale neck.

"It's fine Saya, I can take him." Saya nodded and immediately ran towards the stairs, followed by her Chevaliers and brother.

RikuRikuRikuRikuRikuRikuRikuRikuRikuRikuRikuRikuRikuRiku 

Riku burst out onto the ship's deck to find that Saya's fears hadn't been unfounded.

Haji rushed Riku and Kai towards the landing pad where Joel was being helped into the helicopter, seemingly unable to walk by himself. Looking up, Riku saw Diva circling on her Chevaliers back. With his Chiropteran vision he could tell something had just occurred to her, something that was pleasing her greatly. Riku shivered. It was the same expression Saya got on her face when she was happy.

Diva had obviously communicated to her Chevalier whatever thought it was that was causing her happiness, because in an instant she was swooping down towards him, the feet of the beast she rode on outstretched, claws gleaming. Seeing this, Saya immediately leaped towards him, going faster than he'd ever seen her go, leaving a trail of quickly fading afterimages. Haji was the same, slightly ahead of her. However, it was obvious to everyone there including Riku that they wouldn't make it in time.

The events of the day flashed before Riku's eyes. Watching Kai make up with Saya, playing ball with them, laughing, his fear of Diva finding him, Kai leaving him alone, his fears being realized, and then…

It hadn't affected him as much as it would have before Saya gave him her blood because he was a Chevalier now and rape didn't really have the same connotations as when he had been human. A chiropteran was practically an animal anyway, at least in his mind. But… just because he wasn't sitting huddled up in a corner with shock, didn't mean he wasn't utterly terrified of this girl and her laugh and the way she looked just like Saya except that she _wasn't_.

He was terrified of her. But that didn't mean he was going to make it easy for her!

The world seemed to slow down.

_The only sounds Riku heard were the whistling of the ocean and the laughing tone of Diva's voice as she called out to her Chevalier, telling him to go faster._

_The only things he smelled were salt from the ocean and the drying blood from Diva's nails where she had pinned him to the wall. The wounds were already healed._

_The only thing he could taste was the air, laden with blood and anger and pain and purest angst – melancholy in its truest form._

_The only color he saw was __**red**_

To the humans who watched Riku in the next few seconds, everything but the transformation that followed was a blur, and even that went quickly. The chiropterans, however, saw every detail.

For a moment everything had seemed to still, and then Riku's eyes had changed from their quiet and unassuming brown, to a ferocious red which was crimson and scarlet and blood, freshly spilled.

His flesh rippled, the skin going from the nice tan he'd picked up in Vietnam, to a silver-gray color, scaled like a serpents, hairless and tougher than tempered steel. His hands now sported a grand total of three claws, all ivory with the middle being the longest, on each hand. The arms grew and lengthened until they brushed the ground. Or they would have if Riku weren't growing to a height of seven feet in the few, short seconds in which the metamorphosis took place.

His arm sockets were giving birth to two new arms on each side, all four as long as the originals.

Most of his new height was in his legs, which had grown to match his arms. His feet were now, like his hands, three-clawed and spread to balance his new weight.

His spine sprouted rigid spikes all the way along its length, stopping at his new tail, whose end sported a thirty-six inch spike of chiropteran bone.

It was hollow.

His head, completely unchanged, looked out of place in the midst of his chiropteran features, lacking scales, sitting atop a long, graceful, lizard's neck in softest grey, utterly devoid of an Adam's apple, or any other discerning physical characteristics of a male.

Riku looked almost complete, a Chevalier clinging to his humanity, like a seven-foot tall, silver-gray, humanoid lizard with six arms, and vampiric dragon with a tail like a spear.

The enemy Chevalier plunged down towards the ship and he rose to meet him. One of his arms shot out like a spring, its force restricted until the instant when it's released, it's controlled energy working in its favor. It lengthened, grabbing an outstretched leg and flinging both, the mistress and her slave, off the side of the ship. Riku followed, dashing along the deck until his back gave way to two, thin wings, no more than a foot and a half wide, though they were four times that length. They were scaled like the rest of him, and looking as if they belonged on a bat.

He took to the air.

CarlCarlCarlCarlCarlCarlCarlCarlCarlCarlCarlCarlCarlCarlCarlCarl 

Faced with the sudden appearance of Riku's abilities, Carl was unsure. Did his mistress want him to engage the enemy Chevalier, or was a tactical retreat in order?

The split second he took to look around and check his bride's feelings cost him.

Riku's caught him in the gut with his spiked tail, immediately injecting him with poison that ate its way through Carl's stomach, causing him phenomenal pain. Not a moment later, Carl, screaming his agony, tore the spike, the needle, the _jab_, out of his mid-section and, spinning Riku once around his head, threw him back towards the ship where he made a deep dent in the wall of the deck above the others, proving the older Chiropteran's strength.

Panting as the poison did its work, he had never been gladder of Diva's whimsicality.

"Carl, I want to go home, right now! Riku isn't fun anymore!"

"If that is what you wish, Diva." Carl was weakening quickly. He knew he had to start flying quickly or he wouldn't make it. And then… well, he'd just have to hope that Amschel had something to that would deal with the poison. Some blood wouldn't be bad either. He turned to go, then stopped.

His gaze went to Saya. He hadn't even had the chance to fight her properly!

"Now Carl!"

"Yes, Diva."

And with that he started the long flight back to the rest of the Chevaliers and Amschel's _hopefully_ welcoming arms. If the older Chevalier didn't want to help him… he shivered.

_But… Diva… Diva will tell him to…_ he shivered again.

KaiKaiKaiKaiKaiKaiKaiKaiKaiKaiKaiKaiKaiKaiKaiKaiKaiKaiKaiKai 

Saya and Haji had immediately gone to Riku's side when he was thrown into the wall of the upper deck. Kai hadn't even tried, although David had been watching him closely, ready to stop him if he did.

But he didn't, too shocked was he by what he'd just seen to move, let alone go to his brother's aid.

Oh sure, he'd known that Riku was a Chevalier now, which, according to multiple sources, mean he was a chiropteran. And yet, he hadn't really _known_. Now he did, and he didn't like it. The creature he had seen just a moment ago hadn't been his brother, couldn't have been… his brother didn't have wings for one. In vain he attempted to see past Saya and Haji, to see his little brother who he had always protected, lying on the ground over there, not that, that monster.

He could hear David shouting at the driver of the helicopter, something about the ship exploding, and another something about taking off. Kai didn't care, couldn't care, because that creature or family-member, that baby brother or beautiful monstrosity was starting to rise. As Riku's head showed itself to Kai, he felt the breath he'd been holding release itself as he remembered how to breathe. Riku _wasn't_ a monster; he was still a human and-

And then his breath caught again…

Because Riku's head hadn't stopped rising.

And then it wasn't just Riku, sweet, naïve, baby-of-the-family Riku; it was his neck as well. But… It wasn't _his_ neck. It was grey. Silver-grey, actually. And so were his shoulders, and his chest and _oh god_ it had six arms!

Kai started to sob just in time for his younger brother to see it, to reach out to comfort him with those enormous, elongating arms, to crush him against him, Kai imagined, as an anaconda crushes its prey. Kai reared back…

And the helicopter took off, whisking Kai and the other humans _the odd ones out at this party_ away to sanity as the ship blossomed into reds and oranges and yellows… with a spot of silver-grey that became smaller and smaller as the helicopter carried them off…

Kai continued to sob.

OnymousOnymousOnymousOnymousOnymousOnymous 

Well guys…

I quite like it. It's got some angst, some action/Chevalier fights, some multiple POVs, and most importantly, Riku's not-death, or continued living…

Altogether, pretty much everything I wanted to get in, I got in.

At this point, I'm debating whether to leave it at this and let you guys wonder how the story continues with Riku alive; how he deals with Kai's rejection, how Saya changes with her acceptance of her chiropteran-ness, etcetera, etcetera…

Or to continue and answer all of those questions for you. What do you think?

**Warning: In order to answer above question, reader ****must**** click below button. It says 'review' hint hint.**

Ominously yours,

Onymous


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